From April 2003 to April 2005, with your help, we accomplished several targets. I wish to list the highlights below.

We promised to reach out to alumni and we think that we did alright. We consolidated the directory that was created by one of the comittees that served before us into one big online database with more than 1200 members of which more than 600 visited the web site at least once. In addition, we still have more than 2000 names in our archives who spent at least one year at SJS since the early 70's that we did not include.

We have provided and continue to enhance the web site (www.sjsalumni.org) for better communication among all alumni. Try to send pictures from the site: 360 degree postcards and cCheck out the guestbook to see what people thought.

Around a dozen volunteer alumni helped the comittee with online work and with offline duties during the last two years. A very grateful thank you to all.

We facilitated over 15 happy hour gatherings. Those usually ran on the first Thursday of every month. We highlighted people in our SJS community: 17 alumnus of the week, 27 company of the week, 6 teachers, and 48 news bites were published. We sent you over 17 newsletters.

We were involved at the School's 2003 Festival. Our team played basketball and where we took second place. We proposed the Alumni House project to the school (The file is still open). We held two dinners: The 2004 end of year at Grand Hills, and the summer of 2004 at the old Oak tree.

We visited alumni outside Lebanon. Check out the Glendale California one, for example. People got married (celebrations), and people died (obituaries).

We started with a little short of $5,000 in our account. Today, and before the elections, we are shy of $2,000. Usually, people show up to elections and pay their dues. This should increase our revenues. We had planned to generate more revenues from our two dinners. Our forecast was wrong for the summer Oak Tree dinner and alumni last minute cancellations for the Christmas dinner put us under budget. This comittee has definitely learnt how to better organize dinners, the hard way :-)

Five alumni silently dug into their pockets and supported the association with a total of $533; either through the internet or face-to-face. One particular person used event tickets as a donation.

Finally, on behalf of everybody, in these very changing times for the Catholic church and for Lebanon, I thank you for making us part of your lives.

 

Dr. Tony Feghali
President
feghali@aub.edu.lb